Dacia Duster SUV (2018 - 2024) Essential Blue dCi 115 4x2 5d Owner Review

I bought a new '18-plate Duster 1.5DCi Essential in July '18 and regretted it. Right from the start there were multiple problems with the car, but the biggest was with the engine. One minute it would be driving fine along an A-road or motorway, the next minute it was losing power and the dashboard lit up like a Christmas tree. I'd pull it in to the hard shoulder or a layby, and after a minute of the car being hard to start, it would fire up with a big cloud of black smoke from the exhaust and carry on as normal. The car might run fine for 5 weeks, and then this loss of power would happen sometimes twice in one week, and often putting me in a dangerous situation. Two dealers couldn't find the problem and said there were no codes stored in the computer. It was very disconcerting driving the car and wondering whether the engine was going to lose power right in the middle of an over-take or in the outside lane of the motorway. I had no confidence in the car, nor in the ability of the dealers to identify and fix the problem. The paintwork (white) had some areas with pin-pricks in it, what looked like strands of hair stuck within it, or little raised spots where dust or dirt had gotten trapped beneath the paint whilst being painted in the factory. There were many interior rattles, particularly from around the driver's seatbelt mounting point, and from within two of the doors, and from somewhere at the back of the car. The radio was useless and couldn't retain the programmed stations, regularly losing all of its pre-sets, and the Bluetooth would randomly lose its connection with my phone and have to be re-paired. The car was in and out of two dealerships six times in total to try to get the engine issue sorted, but they were unable to. In the end, I had no confidence in the car's reliability and ability to get me safely to my destination. As a self-employed shift-worker, I can't rely on public transport at 4 a.m. to get me to work. I've always purchased cheaper cars, as they're only for getting me to and from work - things like basic Corsas, Hyundai i10s, Peugeot 107s etc, but despite this Dacia being cheap for it's class, it was a false economy and a big disappointment. After 17 months I traded my Duster in for a Toyota Yaris as reliability is critical for me, as not getting to work means not being paid. As an interesting aside, the Toyota garage I traded it in to contacted me 10 days after I picked up my Yaris (I had been upfront with them about the engine issues). They weren't very happy as I'd told them that I'd never been involved in any accidents or had any paintwork done to the Duster (which was true and I had owned it from new). They'd sent the Duster to the local BCA Auction as Dacia wasn't a brand that they would normally retail. When the auction vehicle inspector inspected it for grading, it came back as a Grade 4 and he noted that the car had had paintwork done to the bonnet, NSF wing, NS doors, boot-lid, roof, and OSF door. On discussing this with Toyota, they accepted that I was being truthful and agreed that the car looked immaculate upon trade-in, but stated that the vehicle inspector would have checked the paintwork with a paint gauge which would have shown-up problems with the paint depth across different panels. They knew the inspector and said he was a straight-up guy and knew what he was doing, so reckoned that either it was a sign of poor quality factory paintwork, or my Duster had had some serious "rectification" work after being damaged during transport. Now despite some imperfections in the paint that I had put down to it being a cheap car, I had never seen any evidence of respray work having being done to the car. I can only therefore assume that the car left the factory with the poor quality paintwork,. I'd thought that the paint and rust issues only related to early Indian built Dusters but it seems that even the latest ones have their problems as well. All in all, it's a car that I'm well glad to be shot of. If my Dacia Duster was representative of the standard of cheaper new cars these days then my days of buying them is finished. I'd rather pay more initially for something like a Toyota that will reliably do me for say 7 years, than have the false economy of a cheaper Dacia that proves problematic and has to be moved in after a year or two.